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The Higher Education of the People 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE HISTORICAL 
( SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN 

Wednesciay ISvenlng, January 38, 1891 

BY HERBERT B. ADAMS. Ph. D., PROFESSOR IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS 
UNIVERSITY 



[Reprinted from Appendix to Report of the Society's 38th annual meeting.] 



The Higher Education of the People 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE HISTORICAL- 
SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN 

Wednesday EJveraiing, January 2S, 1891 

£T HERBERT By ADAMS, Ph. D., PROFESSOR IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS 

UNIVERSITY 



[Reprinted from Appendix to Report of the Society's 38th annual meeting.'^ 



• Wi«. Hiat So^i 

68 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 



An address delivered before the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, January 28, 1891, 
by Herbert B. Adams, Ph. D., Professor in the Johns Hopkins University. 



I. 

The beginning and the end of great historical movements 
are always interesting objects of study or contemplation. 
Men like to know the sources as well as the outlets of great 
rivers like the Nile or the Mississippi. Assembled here in 
this state capitol, in this noble university-town, midway 
between the Father of Waters and the Great Lakes, near 
those "Historic Waterways," of which one of your own 
historians has written, let us consider the historic origin 
and democratic tendencies of one of the noblest of all great 
currents of human progress, the Higher Education. 

Far back through the deserts of past time we may ascend 
this stream. High up in the mountains of Egyptian, 
Babylonian and Grecian history we may find its sources. 
The higher education came first in the experience of every 
ancient and of every modern people. There must always 
be mountain springs and upland lakes to feed the broaden- 
ing floods of mighty rivers like the Nile and the Mississippi 
in their fertilizing course through the great plains of popu- 
lar culture. If you choke these springs and exhaust these 
lakes, the rivers will run dry and the whole country will 
become an arid waste. Then will arise famine in the land 
of Egypt and dearth in the Mississippi valley. Ill favored, 
lean-fleshed kine will begin to come up out of those rivers, 
and they will eat up the well-favored and fat kine that 
once fed in the meadows. 

The governors and law-givers of ancient EgyjDt provided 
well for the higher education. In the three great educa- 
tional capitals of that country, Thebes, Memphis and Heli- 
opolis, began the development of land surveying, geometry, 
astronomy, and of all our mathematics and geography. 
The priests of Egypt invented our system of dividing time 



DR ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 69 

t)y years and months. It was to Egypt that Roman em- 
3)erors and Roman popes had to turn for instruction when- 
ever they needed to reform the calendar. All the arts and 
sciences of antiquity were cultivated in those old university 
towns along the river Nile. Egyptian priests were the 
best physicians and surgeons of their time. They were 
skilful oculists and could perform most delicate operations, 
like the removal of cataract from the eye. Greek philoso- 
phers and students went to, Egypt for special training very 
much as Romans afterwards went to Athens, or English- 
men to Florence and Bologna, or Americans to Paris and 
Berlin. 

The entire Hebrew nation went to school in Egypt, and 
learned from Egyptian task-masters the first rudiments of 
manual training. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of 
the Egyptians. It was probably in the university town of 
Heliopolis that he was trained to become the law-giver for 
his people, as the Egyptian priests were the law-givers of 
Egypt. It was by the bitter waters of Marah and not at 
Mount Sinai that Moses first promulgated statutes and or- 
dinances. There is a profound meaning in the fact that the 
whole history of the Hebrew people was a process of higher 
education in the law as given by Moses. And it not a 
remarkable fact that a high priest of this same people, 
whose education proceeded from one well-trained man, 
should have been the first in the world to ordain the es- 
tablishment of common schools? 

It was in the year of our Lord, 64, shortly before the des- 
truction of the temple at Jerusalem, and the consequent 
dispersion of the Jews, that the high priest, Joshua Ben 
Gamala, imposed upon every Jewish town the obligation to 
support a school. If the town happened to be divided by a 
river, with no means of transit by a safe bridge, it was or- 
dered that a school must be kept on each side. Probably 
this ordinance was never carried out, but the idea of Jewish 
town schools nearly sixteen centuries before the compulsory 
education was introduced in Massachusetts is sufficiently 
remarkable. Indeed, the Massachusetts law seems to havf 
been further anticipated by a provision in the Jewish Tal- 



70 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

mud, which required that a town school should have a sin- 
gle teacher if the number of pupils did not exceed twenty- 
five. For more than twenty -five the town had to employ an 
assistant teacher. If the number of pupils exceeded forty, 
two masters were required. 

This Jewish law was really more generous than that pro- 
claimed by the good fathers of Massachusetts in 1(347. 
Their law made it obligatory upon every township with 
fifty householders to have an elementary school, and every 
community with one hundred families to have a grammar 
or classical school to prepare boys for Harvard college. 
The motive of the Puritan legislators of Massachusetts, in 
thus providing for the higher education of the people was,, 
in their own quaint words, "that learning may not be 
buried in the grave of our fathers, in the church and com- 
monwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors." The Jew- 
ish motive for proposing compulsory education in 64, 
A. D., was as patriotic and far-sighted as that of Prussia, 
after her defeat at Jena in 180G, or as that of France after 
the surrender of her emperor at Sedan. All three nations, 
the Jews, the Germans and the French, sought moral and 
intellectual recuperation from apparently overwhelming 
disaster by resorting to the higher edudation of the people,, 
and all three nations have succeeded in their noble pur- 
pose. 

The common schools of America sprang from sources 
higher than themselves, from English traditions of college 
education, from earlier fountain-heads of learning far back 
in historic mountains, from springs more remote and mys- 
terious than were once the headwaters of the Nile. The 
history of education is one long stream with a continuous, 
inexhaustible flow from such upper tributaries of science as 
the schools of Thebes, Memphis, Alexandria, the Grseco- 
Roman world, and from such later well-springs of learn- 
ing as the Benedictine monasteries, the cathedral schools, 
Mie colleges and universites of Europe. America began 
her educational history with the foundation of classical 
schools and colleges in New England and Virginia. The im- 
pulses received from university men in colonial days gave 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS, 71 

character and direction to the educational policy of these 
United States, as is clearly seen in the Ordinance of 1787, 
which has been called "the magna charta of the North- 
west Territory." The noble provisions in that ordinance 
for schools and free institutions mark its authors as liber- 
erally-educated and far-sighted statesmen. Daniel Web- 
ster, in one of his greatest speeches, said: "We are accus- 
tomed, sir, to praise the law-givers of antiquity, and we 
help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I 
doubt whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or 
modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and 

lasting character than the ordinance of 1787 

We sees its consequences at this moment, and we shall 
never cease to see them perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow." 

One of the consequences of that ordinance is the excel- 
lent school system of the state of Wisconsin, and her pres- 
ent school fund of $348,000. Governor Peck, in his recent 
message to the legislature, January 15, 1891, justly ob- 
served that " For twenty years the progress of Wisconsin 
in educational matters has been remarkable, and much 
more rapid than in many older states." 

Historically speaking, all forms of popular culture have 
proceeded from higher sources than the common level. 
Neither science nor religion could have gone forth in fertil- 
izing streams for the benefit of mankind, unless there had 
been mountain springs above the plain. There never was 
a time in the history of colleges and universities when the 
intellectual and moral good they represented, and the ben- 
eficial influences proceeding from them, did not vastly 
transcend whatever local evils or temporary abuses may 
have crept into academic life and administration. Church 
and state and domestic life have all suffered from unworthy 
representatives, but that fact does not militate against the 
•eternal worth of family institutions or of civil and relig- 
ious society. 

Universities have always been closely associated with 
great popular or intellectual movements. From their very 
origin, European universities have been inseparably con- 
nected with the highest interests of the people. In the 



72 VISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

twelfth and thirteenth centuries we find them practically- 
identified with the rise of the Italian republics, and with 
the spirit of municipal liberty exhibited in the guilds, or 
trades-unions. In fact the word university means simply 
a corporation, and it was used either for a commune or a 
guild. When the communes of Italy acquired wealth and 
independence, there was great rivalry among them in the 
encouragement of higher education. The universities re- 
flected the character of the towns which encouraged their 
growth. Both town and gown were thoroughly democratic. 
Universities were simply voluntary associations, guilds or 
corporate unions of scholars and teachers for higher educa- 
tional purposes under municipal patronage. If the city 
authorities did not treat the university well, professors and 
students simply migrated to some other town, whose 
tradesmen and boarding-house keepers received them with 
open arms. Many of the Italian universities, like Padua 
and Viacenza, were the direct result of student-secessions 
from Bologna, "the mother of studies." Leipzig was first 
recruited by a migration from Prague, and Cambridge was 
built up by defections from Oxford and Paris. 

The vast number of students who attended these mediaeval 
universities, shows what popular institutions they were. 
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Bologna had 
ten thousand students and before the close of that century 
there were tweny thousand. Paris was even more popular 
than Bologna and remains to this day one of the greatest 
university centers in the world. At one time, mediaeval 
Oxford is said to have had thirty thousand students, ten 
times as many as in the more aristocratic era introduced by 
ecclesiastical influences after the Protestant reformation. 

College men in our day, accustomed to the yoke of £.bso- 
lute and personal government, have no conception of the 
self-governing spirit which pervaded all medigeval uni- 
versities. So democratic were the ultramontane and cis- 
montane student nations at Bologna, that each nation 
elected its own consiliarius and each of the two great uni- 
versity bodies, with the aid of their consiliarii, elected the 
rector and all other governing authorities. In Italy, pro- 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 73 

fessors taught, like St. Paul, in their own hired houses. It 
was, therefore, "an easy thing," says Laurie, "for the 
whole university to migrate and desert the town, which 
owed much of its prosperity to them." The most character- 
istic and constitutional feature of a mediaeval university is 
that of "a free autonomous organization of teachers and 
scholars." At Paris, the students and their masters were 
grouped in four great nations. On account of the youth- 
fulness of the students, the masters chose the procurators 
or heads of nations, and the procurators erected the rector. 
Subsequently the masters organized by faculties, or col- 
legia,- each with its own dean. John Richard Green, speak- 
ing of Oxford, said: "The university was a state abso- 
lutely self-governed, and whose citizens were admitted by 
a purely intellectual franchise. Knowledge made the 
'master.' To know more than one's fellows was a man's 
sole claim to be a ' ruler,' in the schools; and within this 
intellectual aristocracy, all were equal. When the free 
commonwealth of masters gathered in the aisles of St. 
Mary's, all had an equal right to counsel, all had an 
equal vote in the final decision. Treasury and library 
were at their complete disposal. It was their voice 
that named every officer, that proposed and sanctioned 
every statute. Even the chancellor, their head, who had 
at first been an officer of the bishop, became an elected of- 
ficer of their own." The university of Cambridge is still 
called in its calendar, a literary republic. 

The services of the Oxford reformers to classical and 
biblical scholarship are well known. The torch of the new 
learning was brought from the Italian universities to Eng- 
land by G-rocyn, who studied Greek in Florence and began 
to teanh it at Oxford in 1491, one year before America was 
discovered. Let no American ever raise his voice against 
the study of Greek, for the revival of the Greek science of 
geography in the fifteenth century led the way to the dis- 
covery of a new world. It was the renaisance of Greek 
studies that awakened the spirit of free inquiry and intel- 
lectual liberty. It was a knowledge of Greek that enabled 
John Colet, at Oxford, to lecture on the epistles of St. Paul. 



74f WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

So great were the services of the English universities in 
the sixteenth cen:ury that Henry VIII. once exclaimed to 
his hungry courtiers, who were urging him to lay hands on 
academic endowments, "Sirs, I tell you that I judge no 
land in England better bestowed than that which is given 
to our universities.'' 

The encouragement of higher education by government 
aid, in one form or another, has been a recognized princi- 
pal of public policy in every enlightened state, whether an- 
ffiient or modern. Older than the recognition of popular 
education as a public duty was the endowment of colleges 
and universities at public expense for the education of men 
who were to serve church or state. It is a mistake to 
think that the foundation of institutions by princes or 
prelates was a purely private matter. The money or the 
land always came from the people in one form or another, 
and the benefit of endowment returned to the people sooner 
or later. Popular education is the historic outgrowth of 
the higher education in every civilized country, and those 
countries which have done most for universities have the 
best schools for the people. It is an error to suppose that 
endowment of the higher learning is confined to Roman 
and German emperors, French and English kings. 
Orowned and uncrowned republics have pursued the 
isame public policy. Indeed, the liberality of government 
towards art and science always increases with the progress 
of liberal ideas, even in monarchical countries like Germany, 
where, since the introduction of parliamentary govern- 
ment, appropriations for university education have greatly 
increased. 

The total cost of maintaining the Prussian universities, 
as shown by the reports of our commissioner of education, 
is about two million dollars a year. Onl}^ about nine per 
cent of this enormous outlay is met by tuition fees. The 
state contributes all the rest in endowments and appropria- 
tions. Prussia now gives to her universities more than 
twice as much as she did before the Franco-Prussian war, 
as shown by the report of our commissioner at the Paris 
exposition in 1867. In that year France gave her faculties 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 75 

of higher instruction only $765,764. After the overthrow 
of the second empire, popular appropriations for higher 
education greatly increased. France now appropriates for 
college and university faculties $2,330,000 a year, more than 
three times the amount granted under Louis Napoleon. 
Despotism is never so favorable to the highest interests of 
education as is popular government. Louis XIV. and Fred- 
erick the Great, according to the authority of Roscher, the 
political economist, regarded universities, like custom- 
houses, as sources of revenue, for the maintenance of ab- 
solute forms of government. The world is growing weary 
of royal munificence when exercised at the people's ex- 
pense, with royal grants based upon popular benevolence, 
and redounding to the glory and profit of the princes rather 
than to the folk upholding his throne. Since the introduc- 
tion of constitutional government into European states, 
representatives of the people are taking the power of edu- 
cational endowment and subsidy into their own hands, 
and right royally do tbey discharge their duty. The little 
republic of Switzerland, with a population of only three 
millions, supports four state universities, having altogether 
more than 300 instructors. Its cantons, corresponding 
upon a small scale to our states, expend over $300,000 a 
year upon the higher education. The federal government 
of Switzerland appropriates $115,000 to the polytechnicum, 
and $56,000 in subsidies to cantonal schools, industrial and 
agricultural; besides bestowing regularly $10,000 a year for 
the encouragement of Swiss art. The aggregate revenues 
of the colleges of Oxford, based upon innumerable historic 
endowments, public and private, now amount fully to two 
million dollars a year. The income of the Cambridge col- 
lege endowments amounts to quite as much. But all this, 
it may be said, represents the policy of foreign lands. Let 
us look at home and see what is done in our American com- 
monwealths. 

Turning at once to the great west, we find that Wiscon- 
sin pays one-eighth of a mill tax for her university, and that 
yields $72,000 per annum. Wisconsin has given for higher 
education over $1,200,000. Nebraska is even more generous 



76 WISCONSIN HISTOKICAL SOCIETY. 

to her state university. She grants three-eighths of a mill tax. 
The state of California grants one-tenth of a mill tax, which 
yields over $76,000. Besides this, the university of Cali- 
fornia has a permanent state endowment of $811,000, yield- 
ing an annual income of $52,000, making a total of $128,000, 
which the state gives annually to its highest institution of 
learning. Altogether, California has expended upon higher 
education more than two and one-half million dollars. The 
state of Kansas give.^ its rising university at Lawrence 
$75,000 a year, " levied and collected in the same manner 
as are other taxes. " 

The principles of state aid to at lea?t one leading institu- 
tion in each commonwealth is established in every one of 
the western and southern states. In New England, Harv- 
ard, Yale, and other foundations of higher learning appear 
now to flourish upon individual endowments and private 
philanthropy; but almost every one of these collegiate in- 
stitutions, at one time or another, has received state aid. 
Harvard was really a state institution. She inherited only 
£800, and 330 books from John Harvard. She was brought 
up in the arms of her Massachusetts nurse, with the bottle 
always in her mouth. The towns were taxed in her inter- 
est, and every family paid its peck of corn to support Pres- 
ident Dunster and his faculty. Harvard college has had 
more than half a million dollars from the public treasury 
of Massachusetts. While undoubtedly the most generous 
gifts have come to New England colleges from private 
sources, yet every one of them, in time of emergency, has 
come boldly before representatives of the people and stated 
their want. They have always obtained state aid when 
it was needed. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
once became somewhat embarrassed financially, and asked 
the legislature for $100,000. The institution got $3^0,000, 
twice what it asked for, upon conditions that were easy to 
meet. 

Turning now from historic examples of state aid to the 
higher education by individual American commonwealths, 
let us inquire briefly concerning the attitude of the Father 
of this federal republic towards institutions of science and 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS, 77 

sound learning. Washington's grand thought of a national 
university, based upon individual endowment, may be 
found in many of his writings, but the clearest and strong- 
est statement occurs in his last will and testament. There 
he employed the following significant language: 

"It has been my ardent wish to see a plan devised on a libei'al scale, 
which would have a tendency to spread systematic ideas through all parts 
of this rising empire, thereby to do away local attachments and state 
prejudices, as far as the nature of things would, or indeed ought to admit,, 
from our national councils. Looking anxiously forward to the accomplish- 
ment of so desirable an object as this is, in my estimation, my mind has 
not been able to contemplate riny plan more likely to effect the measure- 
than the establishment of a University in a central part of the United 
States, to which the youths of fortune and talents from all parts thereof 
may be sent for the completion of their education, in all branches of polite 
literature, in arts and sciences, in acquiring knowledge in the principles of 
politics and good government, and, as a matter of infinite importance in 
my judgment, by associating with each other, and forming friendships in 
juvenile years, be enabled to free themselves in a proper degree from those 
local prejudices and habitual jealousies which have just been mentioned, 
and which, when carried to excess, are never-failing sources of disquietude 
to the public mind, and pregnant of mischievous consequences to this 
country. Under these impressions, so fully dilated, I give and bequeath, 
in perpetuity, the fifty shares which I hold in the Potomac company, * * * 
towards the endowment of a university, to be established within the lim- 
its of the District of Columbia, under the auspices of the general govern- 
ment, if that government should incline to extend a favoring hand 
towards it." 

Washington's dream of a great university, rising grandly 
upon the Maryland bank of the Potomac, remained a 
dream for three-quarters of a century. But there is noth- 
ing more real or persistent than the dreams of great men, 
whether statesmen like Baron von Stein, or poets like 
Dante and Petrarch, or prophets like Savonarola, or 
thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas, the fathers of the 
church and of Greek philosophy. States are overthrown; 
literatures are lost; temples are destroyed; systems of 
thought are shattered to pieces like the statues of Pheidias; 
but somehow truth and beauty, art and architecture, forms 
of poetry, ideals of liberty and government, of sound 
learning and of the education of the youth, these immortal 
dreams are revived from age to age, and take concrete 



78 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

shape before the very eyes of successive generations. The 
idea of university education in the arts and sciences, is as 
old as the schools of Greek philosophy. The idea was per- 
petuated at Alexandria, Rome and Athens under the em- 
perors. It endured at Constantinople and Ravenna. It 
was revived at Bologna, Paris, Prague, Heidelberg, Oxford 
and Cambridge, under varying auspices, whether of city, 
church or state, and was sustained by the munificence of 
merchants, princes, prelates, kings and queens. Ideas of 
higher education were transmitted to a new world by 
Englishmen who believed in an educated ministry, and 
who would not suffer learning to perish in the wilderness. 
The collegiate foundations laid by John Harvard in Mas- 
sachusetts, and Commissary Blair in Virginia, were the 
historic models for many similar institutions, north and 
south. George Washington, the chancellor of William 
and Mary, when he became president of a federal republic, 
caught up, in the capital of a westward-moving empire, 
the old university idea, and gave it national scope. There 
upon the bank of the Potomac he proposed to found a na- 
tional university, drawing its economic life from the great 
artery of commerce which connects the Atlantic sea-board 
and the great west. As early as 1770, Washington de- 
scribed this Potomac route -as " the channel of the exten- 
sive and valuable trade of a rising empire." 

Was it not in some measure an historic, although an un- 
conscious, fulfillment of that old dream of Washington, 
when, a hundred years later. Johns Hopkins determined to 
establish upon the Maryland side of the Potomac, a univer- 
sity with an economic tributary in the Baltimore & Ohio 
railroad, which follows the very windings of that ancient 
channel of commerce? Forms of endowment may change, 
but university ideas endure. They are the common historic 
Inheritance of every enlightened age and of every liberal 
mind; but their large fulfillment requires a breadth of 
foundation and a range of vision reaching beyond mere lo- 
cality. Universities that deserve the name have always 
been something more than local or provincial institutions. 
Since the days when Roman youth frequented the schools 



DE. AD/MS'S ADDRESS. 79> 

of Grecian philosophy, since the time when ultramontane^ 
and cismontanes congregated at Bologna, since students or- 
ganized by nations at Paris, Prague and Heidelberg, since 
northern Scots fought southern Englishmen at Oxford, uni- 
versity life has been something more than national. It has 
been international and cosmopolitan. Though always lo- 
cally established and locally maintained, universities are 
beacon lights among the nations, commanding wide hori- 
zons of sea and shore, catching all the winds that blow and 
all the sun that shines, attracting, like the great light -house 
of Ptolemy Philadelphus on the island of Pharos, sailors 
from distant lands to Alexandrine havens or speeding the 
outward voyager. 



II. 



We have seen the historic origin of higher education 
and the generous ways in which it has always been sup- 
ported in Europe and America. Let us now briefly notice 
the present democratic tendencies of universities, and see 
what these institutions are doing for the people. There is 
in England in our time, a remarkable educational move- 
ment called university extension. It is a movement to- 
wards educational democracy and it presents a striking 
contrast to the old educational aristocracy represented by 
the privileged classes, who for many generations, monopo- 
lized the colleges of England. 

There is a new spirit in the academic life of to-day. Men 
are coming out from the cloisters and quadrangles of those 
conservative old universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 
They are bringing to the English people, in their towns 
and rural districts, some of the best fruits of academic 
learning in the form of local lectures, given in systematic 
and instructive courses. University extension has been 
well defined as an organized attempt "to bring the univer- 
sity to the people when the people cannot come to the uni- 
versity." 



^0 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

University extension is undoubtedly a part of that larger 
democratic movement which in England has gradually ad- 
vanced during the present century. It is interesting to re- 
flect that all the great landmarks of popular progress in 
the mother country are within the memory of living men. 
The widening of the suffrage by successive reform bills, 
the emancipation of Catholics, Jews, and women, the in- 
stitution of compulsory education for children, the estab- 
lishment of local examinations, local lectures, local col- 
leges and colleges for women, these are all very recent 
events and indicate the popular direction in which conser- 
vative England is now rapidly moving. 

Pioneer attempts in the direction of higher education for 
the people were early made by university men like Dr. 
Thomas Arnold, of Rugby (1795-1843), Frederick William 
Robertson (1816-1853), Frederick Denison Maurice (1805- 
1872), and Charles Kingsley (1819-1875). All of these 
eminent teachers and churchmen lectured and wrote for 
the benefit of English workingmen. Dr. Arnold, while 
writing his history of Rome and teaching the classics to 
boys, found time to lecture on English history in a 
mechanics' institute at Rugby and to write editorials on 
economic and social subjects for the Sheffield Courant. 
Robertson assisted in the organization of the Working- 
men's institute at Brighton. Maurice founded the Working- 
men's college, in London, in 1854, an institution which still 
flourishes under the guidance of university men. Kings- 
ley wrote popular novels like '' Alton Locke " and '' Yeast," 
upon the condition and needs of the workingmen in town 
and country. He instituted " penny readings " in his parish 
for popular entertainment and instruction. Under the name 
of " Parson Lot " he contributed many suggestive articles to 
a paper founded by Maurice and called Politics for the Peo- 
ple. All of this educational work was more or less indi- 
vidual and philanthropic. It was the intellectual and 
spiritual outgrowth of the Chartist and Reform move- 
ments in modern English politics. It was an attempt to 
meet the rising demands of a democratic age and to direct 
dangerous social currents into safe and useful channels. 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 81 

The example and good work of these pioneers in popular 
■education have not been forgotten. These men^s lives en- 
tered into the history of their time. Much of the unselfish 
and devoted spirit of university men in our day is the his- 
toric outcome of those broad and liberal movements in edu- 
cation first quickened by individual influences in school, 
church and society. 

University extension is the academic supply of trained 
lecturers to meet a definite local demand, which first arose 
in associations of school teachers in the north of England 
and among workingmen in great industrial centres. In 
response to many local petitions the university of Cam- 
bridge first took the field in 1873. Oxford followed in 1878, 
A joint society, representing the two great universities and 
many smaller institutions, was formed in London for the 
■extension of university teaching. The work of university 
extension has now reached vast proportions. In the year 
1889-90 no less than 148 courses of local lectures were de- 
livered under the auspices of Oxford university. Cam- 
bridge furnished 125 courses and London 107, making a total 
of 387 in one year. Nearly 18,000 people attended the Ox- 
ford courses in 1889-90; over 11,000 those of Cambridge, and 
nearly 11,000 those of London. Altogether it is estimated 
by the latest and best authorities upon English university 
extension that over 40,000 Englishmen, outside university 
walls, have been reached in a single year by these new and 
■democratic methods of promoting higher popular educa- 
tion. 

So remarkable are the facts concerning the popular suc- 
cess of university extension that it must be recognized as a 
wonderful revival of the original democratic spirit which 
•created the mediseval universities and gave Bologna and 
Paris each 20,000 students. Professor J. F. Jameson, of 
Brown university, speaking to American librarians con- 
cerning the popular character of mediseval universities, 
said: 

•' In the middle ages there was no barrier between the students of Eng- 
land and the country people. Education was profoundly democratic. The 
reformation and the national movement came at the end of the fifteenth 



82 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

century, and education began to be an aristocratic thing. Higher educa.- 
tion especially came to be the possession of the favored few. Now follow- 
ing the movement towards political democracy has come this movement 
towards democracy in education, and one of its fruits is university exten- 
sion. One of the last aristocracies of the world is the aristocracy of edu- 
cation." ' 

In the University Extension Journal for March, 1890, 
there is an interesting article by the Rev. S. A. Barnett, 
upon the University of the Future. The introductory par- 
agraphs suggest the likeness of the mediaeval and modern 
democratic spirit in academic life: 

" Academic critics sometimes carp at the university extension system j 
they forget that it bears a near resemblance to the early growth of Oxford 
and Cambridge. The force which made the univei'sities was a great popu- 
lar movement directly affecting a large portion of English youth; people 
were more mobile in those days, and men of every class could throng to 
Oxford or Cambridge without great disturbance of the national life. 

•' Any yoeman'ssonmight bea ' clerk of Oxenford' if he could find board 
and books out of alms begged for in the streets. Modern comforts and the 
tyranny of trade have changed all this. A man will not, or cannot, leave 
the arm chair or the desk on the impulse of the moment to hurry to the 
feet of some great teacher. The population is too great to find accommo- 
dation at two, or even at twelve centres of learning. Democratise the 
universities as we will, they can only receive the few within their walls. 

" The force which created Oxford and Cambridge is still at work; there 
is, again, a great popular movement in the search for knowledge, and that 
movement can now be met, not by inviting students to leave their homes, 
but by sending teachers to the men and women whose lives are fixed round 
the ganglia of industry. The university extension system does' in modern 
days, what the universities did in ancient days — it is their child and not 
their rival." 

The number of itinerant lecturers employed by Oxford 
last year in extension work was t iventy-f our. Cambridge 
had precisely the same number. The London society em- 
ployed thirty, eight of whom also lectured for Cambridge 
and two for Oxford. The entire force of university men 
engaged in this public educational work is, therefore, sixty- 
eight. It may be added, in this connection, that the staff 
of university extension lecturers is practically distinct from 
the university faculties, who have quite enough work to do 
upon their own academic premises. Young men, graduates, 

» Library Journal, Dec, 1890, p. 118. 



DR ADAMS S ADDRESS. 83 

fellows of colleges, are encouraged to undertake this mis- 
sionary work. In order to avoid possible failure or mis- 
takes, candidates for extension courses are required to sub- 
mit their entire plan of public instruction to critical exami- 
nation by university authorities and to lecture before a 
critical audience of academic experts. 

The average number of lectures in an Oxford extension 
course has been about seven. Cambridge and London 
usually give longer courses, averaging about twelve. The 
main point of difference between the English university 
-extension system of lectures and the old-fashioned lyceum 
course is this: the extension course is confined to one great 
subject and the lectures are all given by the same man; 
whereas, under the old system, single lectures by different 
individuals made up a kind of variety-course, without unity 
or method. University extension lays all possible stress 
upon the idea of continuous progressive instruction upon 
one important theme, like the French revolution, or Irish 
history. Accompanying the lectures there is always a 
printed syllabus or outline of topics, which every student 
in the audience has in his hands. This syllabus saves note- 
taking and affords the student a convenient means for 
reviewing at home the substance of the lecture. Printed 
questions are sometimes appended to the syllabus, and 
these questions may be answered by the student at his 
leisure. The answers are sent by mail to the lecturer, who 
examines the papers and publicly comments upon them, 
without mentioning names, in a class conference held be- 
fore or after the next lecture. 

In every university extension audience, which is as mis- 
cellaneous as the congregation of a church, there is a 
saving remnant of earnest students who are eager to profit 
by instruction from the lecturer. Experience has shown 
that about one-half of every popular audience is disposed 
to do some private work in connection with university ex- 
tension. In order to encourage private reading, the 
lecturer often takes with him from the university a small 
collection of books relating to the topics treated in his 
course. These books are exhibited to the class and are lent 
7 



84 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

out under reasonable conditions. Sometimes public libraries 
co-operate with the lecturer and put certain books upon 
reservation, on a so-called "university extension table" in 
the public reading room, where students can examine the 
literature recommended by the lecturer. 

Mechanics' institutes, local colleges, high-schools, acade- 
mies or literary societies often secure a university exten- 
sion course under their own special auspices and invite a 
larger public to profit by the lectures. In cases where lecture 
funds or endowments already exist, the support of uni- 
versity extension becomes an easy matter. The ordinary 
cost of a course of twelve lectures is about $335; the uni- 
versity fees $325, of which $300 goes to the lecturer, and 
$25 to the examiner. Local expenses are estimated at $100. 
Lecture circuits are frequently arranged so that the burden 
of expense becomes lighter for towns or classes that are 
grouped together, with some regard to the convenience of 
the lecturer. 

At the end of the course the university appoints an exam- 
iner, who, upon the basis of the printed syllabus, prepares 
an examination paper for the class. Two kinds of certifi- 
cates are issued by the university; one is called "Pass," and 
the other " Distinction." Prizes are sometimes offered by 
the university or by local philanthrophy, for the encourage- 
ment of university extension students. These prizes are 
usually in the form of good books, sometimes, however, in 
the form of scholarships which enable students of talent 
and promise to spend some time at the university in labor- 
atory work or quiet study. 

The middle wall of partition between the English uni- 
versities and the English people, has now been completely 
broken down. University extension students who have 
successfully pursued a three-years' course of local lectures, 
embracing six unit courses of twelve lectures each in one 
group of studies, like literature and history, and two other 
unit courses in Latin and one other foreign language, to- 
gether with algebra and Euclid, are allowed by the uni- 
versity of Cambridge not only to enter the university 
without examination, but to have credit for one year's ad- 



DR. ADAMS S ADDRESS. 85 

« 

vanced standing. By two years' residence and successful, 
study at Cambridge, a university extension student can ob- 
tain a bachelors degree. By this liberal arrangement, any 
natural genius who has been discovered among the sons of the 
people, is encouraged to go forward and enjoy the highest 
advantages which university education can afford. 

One of the most interesting features of this modern demo- 
cratic movement toward the higher education of the Eng- 
lish people, is the so called "summer meeting "of university 
extension students at Oxford and Cambridge in the long 
vacation. In much the same way as American students 
study in the laboratories and libraries, of Harvard uni- 
versity or of the university of Wisconsin in the summer 
season, do the school teachers and young people of England 
visit those old and attractive colleges on the Cam and on 
the Isis. In the absence of the regular students, the so- 
called ' ' extensioners " occupy the lecture rooms and labora- 
tories. They listen to instructive courses given by the most 
famous professors in England. They visit art galleries and 
museums. They have garden parties and receptions. They 
make charming excursions on the river or into the country 
and have a most delightful academic picnic for a fortnight 
in the month of August, Such visits to Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, make young England more appreciative of the old 
universities, and at the same time, bring English professors 
into closer touch and sympathy with the English people. 

This idea of a summer school, the English borrowed from 
America. Chautauqua assemblies and the summer schools 
of science instituted by Professor Agassiz were among the 
first types of such summer work. Another excellent edu- 
cational idea the English have avowedly copied from 
Chautauqua, and that is the idea of home- reading circles, 
which have now assumed a national character under the 
direction of the National Home Reading Union. In Eng- 
land the courses of home reading are marked out by uni- 
versity men and are of a very superior character. The 
formation of students' associations has gone hand in hand 
with the university system of local lectures. Students 



86 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

meet together in local clubs, very much after the manner 
of Chautauqua literary and scientific circles. 

The English have borrowed so much from America in the 
methods of encouraging higher education among the 
people that it would not be unfair if America should im- 
port the university extension system and adapt it to our 
democratic needs. Indeed such adaptation has already 
begun in various ways: (1) under the patronage of Chautau- 
qua; (2) in the so-called university and school extension, 
instituted by Mr. Seth Stewart among the teachers of Brook- 
lyn and New York; and (3) in the societies for the exten- 
sion of university teaching in Philadelphia and Washing- 
ton. Mr. Richard G. Moulton, the most experienced 
English lecturer in the field of university extension, has 
been lecturing in various eastern cities and has given a 
strong impulse toward the organization of local lectures 
upon the extension plan. The most active centre of or- 
ganization at the present time is in the city of Philadelphia, 
where there is a large industrial population and where 
there is a superb field for local courses of instructive 
lectures. Mr. Moulton has been engaged to spend ten 
weeks in the work of local organization in the various 
wards and suburbs of the Quaker city. 

The subject of university extension is no new thing in 
the state of Wisconsin. It would be bringing coals to New- 
castle to attempt to persuade this progressive " city of edu- 
cation and laws" that university extension means the 
higher education of the American people. In the cata- 
logue of the university of Wisconsin for 1888-80 standstills 
noteworthy statement: "It is no more impracticable to 
extend the popular range of university education than to 
extend the sweep of university courses. It can scarcely be 
more prophetic to contemplate the higher education of the 
masses to-day than it was to look forward to the common 
education of the masses a few centuries ago." From this 
same catalogue it appears that the university of Wiscon- 
sin, quite independently of English influence, has already 
become a pioneer in a very democratic educational 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 87 

movement. We find, under university direction, ^a well- 
developed system of popular scientific instruction, whereby 
the results of original investigations and of agricultural 
experiments are conveyed to the people, not only^; through 
the medium of printed bulletins, but more directly by local 
lectures and popular discussions. 

We discover the origin of the Wisconsin ^farmers' insti- 
tutes in the suggestive talks of the late Hon. Hiram Smith, 
and in the intelligent law drafted by Mr. Charles E. Esta- 
brook and enacted in 1885. By this law, as amended in 
1887, the board of regents of the state university was 
authorized to hold institutes for the instruction of citizens 
of Wisconsin in the various branches of agriculture. The 
board of regents was authorized to expend [$12,000 per an- 
num for the maintenance of this kind of work. 

It is with no less surprise than admiration ^that an east- 
ern student of institutions examines the reports^of the pro- 
ceedings of these farmers' institutes, 130 of them held for 
two days each, and at various centers all over the state of 
Wisconsin during the past two years. One sees what plain, 
practical subjects interest the people, and how closely 
science may be applied to their actual needs. One is im- 
pressed with the vast amount of original contributions that 
Mr. W. H. Morrison, the energetic and efficient superin- 
tendent of agricultural institutes, has been able to secure 
from the people themselves, through local talent, the spirit 
of co-operation and self-help. Indeed, these published re- 
ports are, as he well says, "the product of the farmers of 
Wisconsin." The member of local institutes, men and 
women, pastors and teachers, have all worked together 
with scientific professors from the university to make this 
educational experiment wonderfully successful. 

An observing traveller and appreciative eastern writer, 
Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, said in his '" Studies of the 
Great West," published in Harper's Magazine, April, 1888: 

' ' Wisconsin is working out its educational ideas on an intelligent system, 
and one tliat may be expected to demonstrate the full value of the popular 
method — I mean a more intimate connection of the university with the 
life of the people than exists elsewhere. * * * The distinguishing thing, 



88 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

however, about the state university is its vital connection with the farmers 
and agricultural interests. * * * I Ijnow of no other state where a like 
system of popular instruction on a vital and universal interest of the state, 
directed by the highest educational authority, is so perfectly organized and 
carried on with such unity of purpose and detail of administration; no 
other in which the farmer is brought systematically into such direct rela- 
tions to the university." 

Let ua consider for a moment upon what historic founda- 
tions this remarkable system rests. Next to the Ordinance 
of 1787, by far the most important educational enactment 
in America was the government land grant in 1862 for col- 
leges of agriculture and the mechanic arts. By the terms 
of this grant, which has been called "a far-reaching meas- 
ure of peace," enacted in the midst of civil war, 30,000 
acres of public land for every senator and representative in 
congress were given to each state in the union. This 
splendid endowment was to be used by each state for the 
"maintenance of at least one college where the leading 
object shall be, ivithout excluding other scientific and clas- 
sical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such 
branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the 
mechanic arts." Was there ever such a noble agrarian ba- 
sis for the higher education of the people? All the friends 
of university extension in England are to-day rejoicing 
over the right just conceded to the county councils to apply 
to the encouragement of local lectures the education fund 
arising from a liquor tax, or the so-called "extra spirit 
duty." This fund varies in different English counties from 
$10,000 to $115,000. The financial basis of university ex- 
tension in England is henceforth secure; but far better than 
the liquor taxes of England or the tobacco taxes of colonial 
Maryland and Virginia, for the support of the higher edu- 
cation of the people, was the United States land grant for 
agricultural colleges in 1862. 

The state of Wisconsin used this land grant wisely. In- 
stead of wasting it upon a separate foundation, as did so 
many of our states, instead of establishing a purely me- 
chanical or agricultural college and thus violating the spirit 
of federal law by "excluding other scientific and classical 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 89 

studies," Wisconsin used her land p^rant in connection with 
her own university, thus strengthening the agricultural and 
mechanical interests of the state by building upon good 
scientific and classical foundations already laid. The state 
of Connecticut pursued the same wise policy in identifying 
her agricultural and mechanical interests with the Shef- 
field scientific school of Yale college. Vermont, Rhode 
Island, New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, North 
Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska and Cali- 
fornia pursued much the same sensible policy of uniting 
higher educational interests. Concentration of state re- 
sources is the governing principle for higher education. 
Distribution of state patronage and the encouragement of 
local self-help are the best rules of public policy as regards 
common schools: centralization for the higher; decentraliz- 
ation for the lower. 

The state of Wisconsin has observed these unwritten laws 
which have been clearly revealed by the educational ex- 
perience of these United States. The whole history of fed- 
eral and state aid to higher education in this country, has 
been thoroughly investigated by one of the former fellows 
of history in the Johns Hopkins university, Dr. F. W. 
Blackmar, now a professor in the state university of Kan- 
sas. His array of facts and suggestive conclusions regard- 
ing the true educational policy of an American state or 
commonwealth are incontrovertable. Wisconsin needs, 
however, no argument to prove the manifest success of her 
own state policy of concentrating educational energy in 
that great central reservoir, the university, from which help- 
ful influences are now being extended throughout this en- 
tire state by means of farmers' institutes, mechanics' insti- 
tutes and teachers' institutes. The whole country knows 
what educational facts are already accomplished here. It 
may be added in this connection, that the friends of uni • 
versity extension in eastern as well as western states, are 
beginning to inquire very carefully into the good example 
of the university of Wisconsin. Educationally, as well as 
physically, Madison is a city set upon a hill and she cannot 
be hid. 



90 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

But there is one undeveloped side of university extension 
in Wisconsin for which an earnest plea may here be made, 
and that is the side of liberal studies relating to man and 
society, such studies as history, literature, art, political and 
social science. Man does not live by bread alone, nor yet 
altogether by mechanics and useful inventions. Mr. Gos- 
chen, president of the London society for the extension of 
university teaching, and a member of parliament said in a 
public address to English university extension students, 
" A man needs knowledge not only as a means of livelihood 
but as a jneans of life." This sentence touches the key-note 
of the highest university education for the people in contra- 
distinction to industrial and technical training. The latter 
is a means of livelihood. University education in the high- 
est sense should be an end in itself, not simply a means of 
money-getting but of a free and noble intellectual life, with 
power to enjoy and to appreciate the best which has been 
thought, said or done in the world. This is the highest ed- 
ucation, this is true culture. The studies which contribute 
to it are rightly called cultural. College men regard such 
an education as liberal, humanizing. When a student right- 
fully obtains the degree of bachelor or master of arts, it is 
npon the basis of liberal not of technical or professional 
studies. These are both legitimate and necessary, and have 
their proper place in the higher education of the people; 
but there are still higher intellectual interests which need 
to be fostered in every enlightened system of state educa- 
tion. 

President Chamberlin in his recent address on univer- 
sity extension, delivered just one month ago before the 
Wisconsin teachers' association, in Madison, December 29, 
1890, said the Wisconsin system of extra collegiate work, 
as thus far developed, has been industrial rather than cul- 
tural. Nevertheless he discerns in this state higher tenden- 
cies in the growth of adult classes in history and literature, 
and in local courses of lectures upon these subjects. At 
the same time he sees the practical difficulties in the way 
of the highest forms of university extension. The teaching- 
force of the state university is already overtaxed. Profes- 



DE. ADAMS S ADDRESS. 91 

sors cannot neglect their regular work and turn aside from 
eager and devoted students in order to seek possible hear- 
ers elsewhere. If university men have any leisure at their 
command they ought to spend it in scientific work for the 
honor of their university and the help of the people. Presi- 
dent Chamberlin sees ultimate hope for university extension 
in Wisconsin along cultural lines, in the selection of special- 
ists who shall make extension work their educational busi- 
ness. 

This is the only possible solution of the problem. A reg- 
ular staff of university extension lecturers in history, liter- 
ature, art, political, social, and natural science, should be 
trained up among the graduates of the university. The 
burden of expense for local lectures should be thrown, for 
the present, upon the communities that desire higher and 
more liberal education for their adult population. Presi- 
dent Chamberlin sees in your high schools and in your 
public school teachers a possible means for local organiz- 
ation and educational development. He suggests special 
lecturers, well-trained in two or three particular lines, 
who might form educational circuits among neighboring 
high schools and give them weekly lectures upon an itiner- 
ant system. Thus around public school teachers and their 
advanced pupils might be rallied, in evening classes, the 
most intellectual people in the community. Other possible 
centres of local organization might be suggested, such as 
church societies, Chatauqua literary and scientific circles, 
labor unions, local institutes and public libraries, now 
called the people's university. 

Hand in hand with university extension through the 
state of Wisconsin should go library extension. Here lies 
the manifest opportunity of the Wisconsin historical so- 
ciety. In close pursuance of that policy of institutional 
co-operation which has made the agricultural college all 
the more efficient by reason of association with the univer- 
sity, this historical society should become intimately, if 
not legally, allied with the historical department of the 
faculty of liberal arts. From this fresh combination of 
forces might proceed energizing, quickening influences 



92 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

upon the historical culture of the whole state. In addition 
to her farmers' and mechanics' institutes, Wisconsin should 
have a great variety of historical and literary institutes, 
local clubs like those now flourishing in Madison and else- 
where. Local lectures should be given to the adult popu- 
lation by graduates of the university; and just as Oxford 
sends her young men into rural towns and mining districts 
with travelling libraries, for the illustration of public 
courses of instruction, so the university of Wisconsin and 
her state historical society should together send out well- 
equipped apostles of liberal culture for good and helpful 
work among the people. W hy should not the historical 
department of the university and the historical society 
thus work together for the higher education of the state of 
Wisconsin? Indeed, they are doing so already, in a repre- 
sentative way, and need only public encouragement and 
larger opportunities to make their co-operation more widely 
efficient. 

In reading a sketch of the state historical society, 
written by its accomplished secretary, Mr. R. G. Thwaites, 
and published in the Magazine of Western History for 
March, 1888, one is impressed with this statement: "While 
historical students come from long distances to use the 
library, and many readers from outside of Madison are in 
the rooms daily, perhaps the majority of those whose faces 
are familiar in the outer precincts of this temple of knowl- 
edge, are the young men and women in attendance on the 
university of Wisconsin, to whom the library is an ex- 
ceptionally great boon; it is regarded by students and 
faculty alike as one of the chief attractions of student life 
at the Badger capital." If the advantages of the library 
of this society are so highly appreciated by the sons and 
daughters of the people during a brief period of academic 
training, how much higher would be their appreciation of 
this literary arsenal, when, after graduation, they go forth 
upon educational campaigns and need the best weapons 
which the state and its historical library can supply? Mr. 
Thwaites said in his latest report, January 15, 1891, that 
this library now numbers nearly 141,000 books and pamph- 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 93 

lets. In another connection, he once said of this treasure- 
house of knovvledge, "it is especially rich in Americana, 
being only surpassed in this particular by two other histori- 
cal libraries — both of them east of the AUeghanies." He 
meant the library of Harvard college and the New York 
state library, at Albany. 

In the historical library of the Johns Hopkins university 
the catalogue and published volumes of the Wisconsin his- 
torical society, were among our earliest and most valued 
acquisitions, thanks to the kind offices of your scholarly 
librarian, Mr. Daniel S. Durrie. Our seminary students 
have long known of the famous and extensive pioneer col- 
lections of Dr. Lyman C. Draper. Ten years ago one of 
our seminary, now a corresponding- member of your soci- 
ety, reviewed in The Nation that splendid historic story of 
" King's Mountain and Its Heroes. ' And we all know that 
Dr. Draper has collected materials for many more volumes 
of frontier history. 

Professor Turner, after using the fur-trade manuscripts 
belonging to this society, has made in a report to your so- 
ciety, a brilliant contribution to the economic and social 
history of Wisconsin. His work was accepted as a doc- 
tor's thesis by the Johns Hopkins university, and it will soon 
be reprinted in revised form in our "University Studies." 
He himself is now a worthy transnaitter of that rare spirit 
of historical research which Professor William F. Allen re- 
presented for twenty-two years among the students of this 
state. What joy that master of classical learning and crit- 
ical scholarship used to take in the growth of your splendid 
collections of manuscripts and other materials for Ameri- 
can history? How he would still rejoice in the prospect of 
a great school of original workers and historical teachers 
who are likely to extend the combined influence of this so- 
ciety and of this university throughout the length and 
breadth of the land? One of the most hopeful signs of the 
times in Wisconsin is the joint investigation undertaken 
by the corresponding secretary of this society and the his- 
torical department of the university, concerning the origin 
and status of the various foreign groups of population in 



94 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

this state. Such an inquiry if worked out in detail will 
give sociological results of profound interest not only to 
the state but to tlie whole country. 

In the annual report of the executive committee of your 
society for 1890, is found this encouraging statement: 

" The special privileges granted in the use of the library to the historical 
department of the state university, during the past two years, have been 
continued vpitli satisfaction to all concerned, during the present college 
year. The increase of attendance upon the seminary course in American 
histoi-y, has been such that the room on the Second floor of the library, 
formerly set aside for Professor Turner's semi-weekly classes, proved too 
small and they are now comfortably quartered adjacent to the library read- 
ing rooms. The seminary students are engaged on lines of original work, 
and it is important that they have especial facilities for the consultation of 
recoi'ds and newspapers and map files, besides the standard works. Every 
effort consistent with the proper execution of our trust has been made and 
will be continued, to enlarge the library's capacity of usefulness to the 
public. In meeting so far as may be, the needs of the state university 
students who daily throng our rooms, we are engaged in an educational 
work of much importance to every section of the commonwealth which is 
represented in the classes of that institution; and nothing is more gratify- 
ing to us than the cordial apprciiation of our labors in this direction, 
which is evinced on so many occa&ions by both faculty ard students." 

In a suggestive article published in the Milwaukee Sen- 
tinel, January 11, 1891, proposing a closer aflSliation of the 
university and this society, it is stated that about ninety 
per cent of the use of the state historical library comes 
from university students and professors. It is evident, 
therefore, that the historical society and the university are 
already closely allied in spirit and a,re practically co-operat- 
ing toward the same higher educational ends. It is the 
part of wise legislation to recognize accomplished facts like 
these and to extend their influence to the people at large. 

The library of the Wisconsin historical society plainly 
needs better rooms, more light and air, more healthful cir- 
culation among the people. One can see at a glance, the 
present crowded condition of your rooms, and a reader of 
your history can quickly discover how the present situation 
came to be what it is. One can follow the whole develop- 
ment process of the library, from that little book case with 
fifty public documents kept by Librarian Hunt, in the of- 



DR. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 95 

fice of the secretary of state, down through the dark, damp, 
and dingy basement of a Baptist church, up again into the 
light of day in the south wing of the state house, where, af- 
ter various vicissitudes, it has completely outgrown its 
once commodious quarters and now requires nothing less 
than a spacious, independent and fire-proof building for its 
141,000 books and pamphlets, for its extensive museum col- 
lections and portrait gallery. The historical library and 
museum of Wisconsin, should be conveniently situated as 
regards the university, and be capable of extension by its 
librarians, and your university graduates and teachers 
throughout the entire state. 

Is this scheme visionary ? Then the regents of the uni- 
versity of the state of New York are dreamers, for they are 
now planning, upon a large scale, for library extension 
from Albany. The federal government, the National 
museum and the Smithsonian institution in Washington, 
have been for many years engaged in distributing scien- 
tific documents among the people, in lending scientific 
specimens to local museums, and, in the noblest of all pub- 
lic works, the '" diffusion of knowledge among men." 

In conclusion, it may be urged upon all members of the 
historical society, of the state university, and of the state 
legislature, to work generously and harmoniously together 
and to strengthen all existing foundations for the higher 
education of the people. Bring representatives of your 
public school system and of your public libraries, of your 
colleges and university, into more hearty and efficient alli- 
ance. Co-operate with every respectable agency for higher 
education, whether by summer schools, teachers' institutes, 
mechanics' institutes, farmers' institutes, or by the distri- 
bution of good literature in popular form, and the institu- 
tion of home reading circles and university extension 
lectures. Break down the antagonism between mental and 
manual labor. Make industrial and technical education as 
honorable as classical culture and the learned professions. 
Teach the science of government and social science, 
European as well as American history, in the public schools. 
Then shall we have greater respect for our fellow-men and 



96 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

toleration for all the world. Theli will our American peo- 
ple begin to appreciate the necessity of supporting all forms 
of education, even the highest, by the combined efforts of 
society and the state. A noble popularity must be given to 
science and art in this enlightened republic. The people of 
every state should be led to see that the higher learning is 
not for the benefit of a favored few, but that it is beneficial 
and accessible to the sons of citizens, of whatever station. 
In the proper co-ordination of the common school system 
with the high school ana the university, the ,' western states 
are leading this nation to a more thoroughly democratic 
state of society, with fewer artificial distinctions of culture, 
with more of the spirit of human brotherhood than the 
world has hitherto seen. The whole country needs this 
popularization of culture. With universal suffrage and 
the sovereignty of the people at the basis of our polical life, 
popular intelligence must be cultivated so that our citizens 
may be both able and willing to hold fast all that is good in 
human history, not only civil and religious liberty, but all 
that makes for happiness and righteousness in a great 
nation. 



Ili»»fi6lii 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 479 623 A 



